Monday, March 20, 2006

We're trying out some new ways of finding links on reddit. As the rate of submission increases on reddit, it is becoming harder and harder for a link to jump out of the crowd. We have a new page located at http://reddit.com/rising to try solve this problem.

The articles on this page are sorted by the number of times they have been viewed somewhere on reddit (whether on the new page, the hot page, or somewhere else). The fewer the views, the higher a link will appear. A link's score also helps it stay higher in the list as well. The net effect is that it's basically the newest page, but "sticky." Links that didn't get a chance to be seen because too many other links were submitted at the same time will now be displayed more often.

It is going to take a little time for the page to reach a balance and start working as we expect, but after a little while it should even out. I'm going to try and use it instead of the new page for a day or so and see how it goes.

One other thing we added tonight is a feature to automatically fix New York Times links that require a login. From now on, these links should go to the same NY Times story, but on a page that doesn't require a login.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Aaron slapped together a nifty widget if you'd like a little slice of reddit on your own website, it'll display top headlines in a variety of ways.

Most of you probably noticed the color we added to the number of a link that had hit #1 on the front page. This was a neat little feature request because the rising and falling action of the reddit hot page makes this possible.

Some of you may attest to having seen an * to indicate these #1 links, but after some good feedback, we swapped these out in favor of something less obtrusive.

Clicking on an illuminated number will send you to a listing of toplinks.

Fortunately, if you're like us, the most light you get exposed to comes from a monitor.

edit: Thanks for reminding me, austinb. You all asked for it, so we started collapsing comments once they sank below your default threshold (-4, but you can change it in your preferences). This should help clean up the comment threads.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

If you venture over to the top page you'll notice we've added a menu to the side to allow you to view the top links for the last day/week/month or all-time. Each of these listings also has an associated RSS feed for those of you who've been begging for it.

Also, we've signed up with Federated Media, and are going to try some of their ads in the future. Don't worry, it won't be anything ugly or obtrusive. We like the way reddit looks too... However, before we can begin, we need to collect some survey info first. If you all would be so kind as so check it out, it would certainly help us out.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

We're trying a little experiment with the new page: links with a submission time less than two hours ago with not display their scores. This was an oft-requested change, and can hopefully protect links from being judged before the title is even read.

Presumably, not displaying the score right away will allow a link to be judged on its own merit, rather than by the first user who sees it.